To illuminate how consolidation shapes food access, ILSR created an interactive map that shows food deserts alongside the location of different types of grocery stores — independent, small chains, large chains, and megachains like Walmart and Kroger.
Millions of Americans live in communities that are both low-income and lacking a grocery store, also known as food deserts. Not having a place to buy fresh food nearby imposes a daily hardship and indignity on life, deepens health inequities, and weakens communities.
For decades the U.S. grocery industry was remarkably competitive, with independent grocers thriving alongside large chains. Virtually every neighborhood and small town had a grocery store, and many had several. Then, in the early 1980s, the government stopped enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act, a critical antitrust law that leveled the playing field for small retailers by prohibiting price discrimination by suppliers. Food deserts and higher prices followed.
ILSR’s interactive map shows where grocery stores are — and whether they are independent or part of a consolidated chain. By displaying the locations of different types of stores alongside food-desert areas, this map helps users explore how corporate concentration has reshaped food access across the United States.
You can explore your congressional district to see grocery store locations color-coded by type to visualize which stores are independent grocery stores, small chains, large chains, and megachains like Walmart and Kroger. You can also easily visualize food deserts where low-income residents live more than a mile (in urban areas) or 10 miles (in rural areas) from the nearest supermarket.
Please email us with any corrections on store types: [email protected].
Special acknowledgements to Stacy Mitchell and Susan Holmberg for their thought partnership on this project.
ILSR's brief explains how corporate consolidation fueled high food prices, and the critical role independent grocers play in building resilient local food systems.
The decision to stop enforcing a single law decimated the independent grocery market and led to the dominance of big chains.
How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert.
99% Invisible, with Stacy Mitchell's help, devotes an episode to the relationship between food deserts and the federal government's abandonment of Robison-Patman Act enforcement.